Straight No Chaser - A Jazz Show

The last decade has seen Tim Warfield, Jr. become one of the most continuously interesting sax players around. After serving his time as a valued sideman with Christian McBride and Nicholas Payton, Warfield   - along with his running mate Terrell Stafford – has emerged as a leader of some stature, playing originals and standards at a high level of expertise. This makes the release of Tim Warfield’...

The public and fans of Connecticut jazz artist Thomas Chapin, who passed away far too early at age 40 in 1998, are invited to a free reception to celebrate the release of Never Let Me Go, a new 3-CD set of Chapin live-quartet performances from '95 and '96. The gathering will be hosted in person by Chapin’s widow Terri Castillo-Chapin from New York City and Emmy-winning filmmaker Stephanie J. Casti...

They start drifting in to our offices in September like so many errant snowflakes – holiday releases from jazz artists that will hit the stores as the temperatures dip. Every year I try to feature a few CDs, and do a Podcast for others worthy of notice that I might not get to zero in on. So Podcast 321 is composed of tracks from CD well worth tracking down for you holiday parties or stocking stuff...

“Let’s put Christ back in Christmas” has been a popular cry of those who think the holiday season has gone off the rails, moving from the observance of a religious holy day to “Spendapalooza”.   Many of the Christmas jazz recordings we hear at Straight No Chaser tend to be of the secular variety, containing holiday spirit, but not necessarily holiday spirituality. Will Scruggs’ Song of Simeon: A C...

Podcast 318 was part one of a two part conversation I had with Husband and Wife duo Marc Johnson and Eliane Elias (pictured). Ms. Elias, born in Brazil and now a tried and true New Yorker, takes the spotlight on their latest ECM release, Swept Away . Her playing alternately shimmers and then bounces along, always with great swaths of romanticism and playfulness. Her compositions give the couple pl...

Marc Johnson is a criminally overlooked bass player. Check out the Downbeat and JazzTimes polls, and you’ll find the established greats (Charlie Haden), the young hotshots (Esperanza Spalding) and the current mainstays (Christian McBride) all feted, By Johnson, whose innovative work spans the past thirty years, is overlooked. .   His latest CD, his second close creation with his wife, pianist Elia...

Books written about jazz over the years have tended to focus on musicians and their creative process or influences. There are great tomes like Garry Giddons’ Visions of Jazz or Hear Me Talkin' To Ya, the Story of Jazz As Told By the Men Who Made It by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff. Both tell their stories with grace, style and detail and are essential reading for any jazz fan. Now another book joins...

“Jimi had a trio that sounded like an avalanche coming down off Mt. Everest . Even when he laid out his band thundered on, bringing to mind Miles Davis’ fabled comment: “This black dude made two white cats play their asses off.” I loved that! Wes Montgomery was also playing around New York at the time but a Hendrix performance compared to a Wes performance—I once saw them both the same night—was s...

As a child of the 1970’s, progressive rock was a big part of my musical life. Bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer were huge at that time, much to the chagrin of rock purists and my father, who thought they butchered classical music, I have fond memories of seeing ELP at the Hartford Civic Center on their “Works” tour, just after they let go the symphony orchestra previously being schlepped o...

Fifteen years ago, Marc Samuels decided to add a part-time job running a record label to his already busy life. Since that date, his Basin Street Records has signed a dozen artists and has released nearly 50 projects including 2012 Grammy winner Rebirth of New Orleans by the Rebirth Brass Band. To celebrate their anniversary, Basin Street Records artists will be performing all across the world thi...

“(Bill) Laswell’s pet concept is 'collision music' which involves bringing together musicians from wildly divergent but complementary spheres and seeing what comes out." – Chris Brazier. If Bill Laswell excels in making music that uses a world-wide sonic palette, then his latest release, Means of Deliverance ( Innerhythmic Records), represents a rare return to his musical roots. Armed with a new i...

When Michael Chabon’s novel Telegraph Avenue was published, I knew that there would be a podcast in it for us all. The novel, set in 2004, has at its center the relationship between Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe. Archy is black, Nat is white and Jewish and the pair have been the proprietors of Brokeland Records, a used record store located in North Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue. The plot is not nea...

"This is a delightful record, funny, quirky, personal jazz. Jeff's piano is informed by many styles and genres (as is his writing), hints of Gospel, Evans, Monk, Shorter, Latin and Herbie have all found a happy home in Jeff's brain, as have we the happy listeners." - Arturo O'Farrill Scratch the surface of any veteran jazz musician’s persona and you’ll find many facets. To be a professional musici...

For most jazz listeners, flamenco music officially became part of the jazz canon with the 1981 release of Friday Night in San Francisco , a live album by fusion masters Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin, joined by Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucía. Their 1980 concert was described by jazz author and critic Walter Kolosky as "a musical event that could be compared to the Benny Goodman Band's performanc...

It’s Hallowe’en time again, and so its time for our semi-annual Spooky Songs Podcast (you can find past editions here and here ). This year we feature some monstrous tunes from both new and established artists you may enjoy. It seems like the little ghouls and goblins in our neighborhood are going to miss the whole Trick or Treats scene again this year, as Hurricane Sandy seems to be picking up wh...

As a kid, I was first exposed to music by listening to records like “Tubby the Tuba”, “Peter and the Wolf” and “A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.” These were the recordings that introduced me to the joys of sound, and also of collecting records. I kind of wish Mark Oblinger had been working back in the early Sixties when I could have profited from his work. A former member of rock band Fire...

Close your eyes and picture the jazz quintet. A classic arrangement of musicians – saxophone, trumpet, piano, bass, drums. Now open your eyes and check out Matthew Silberman’s latest quintet. Saxophone, bass, drums – and two guitars? What is this, a bar band in your local rock club? No, it’s all part of this promising young player’s vision for his band . “I was thinking of using one guitarist as a...

"Gilson Schachnik is an artist for the 21st century. [He] creates the kind of all-encompassing jazz mix that fans of the music's new world order now demand: entertaining, uncliched and flavored with tastes from around the world." – Bob Young When you want to talk about the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim, it’s best to find a Brazilian musician with whom you have the conversation. And that’s what I d...

Bob Belden says of his latest release, Transparent Heart , “This record is not a jazz record, it's about my life in Manhattan “, and you know something is up. The Grammy-winning saxophone player has been acclaimed as an arranger, composer, bandleader and producer. He has been intimately involved in the award-winning reissue project of the Miles Davis catalogue, writing illuminating liner notes. He...

In March of this year, I had a conversation with Conrad Herwig , and we talked about the state of the trombone today. We agreed that there may be a renaissance of sorts happening for the instrument, with any number of top ‘bone players getting to lead bands and release recordings as frontmen. Further proof for this thesis can be found with the release of Joe Fiedler’s Big Sackbut , which puts toge...

Rio Sakairi is a major figure in the New York City jazz scene today. As the Director of Programming at The Jazz Gallery , she has created an internationally recognized breeding ground for blossoming musical talent, helping to launch the careers of dozens of today’s finest young players. When a 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011 , spawning devastating tsunamis...

Let me preface this posting but saying this – I don’t “get” Radiohead. I’ve seen them live – they opened for R.E.M. – and I’ve listened multiple times to almost all of their albums. I’ve read a ton about their masterpiece, OK Computer , and tried to bring that to my listening.   And still – I don’t get Radiohead. But lots of jazz artists seem to. So since Thom Yorke, the frontman and co-writer of...

John Coltrane’s 86th birthday would have been last week, and as part of the Straight No Chaser celebration of the great saxophonist, I spoke with Dr. Leonard Brown, the editor of John Coltrane and Black America’s Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music , released in August 2010 by Oxford University Press. Dr. Brown will be a part of a major program at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, entit...

This is the 300th podcast for my show! It hardly seems possible that when I started eight years ago I would have this much to show for it, and over 1.1 million downloads from around the world. To celebrate, I thought I would take a moment to examine the song from which the blog takes its title - "Straight, No Chaser" by Thelonious Monk. The tune was originally recorded by Monk for Blue Note Record...

Is “Stretch Music” is the new Next Big Thing in Jazz, and perhaps music in general?   I had discussions about the music released recently by Robert Glasper and Christian Scott with several writers covering the Detroit International Jazz Festival earlier this month, and they all felt that a number of jazz musicians are whipping up a tasty brew of modern jazz, neo-soul, hip-hop and downtempo chill m...